1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus, and particularly relates to an image pickup apparatus capable of eliminating dust that has become attached to an imaging surface of an image sensor of the image pickup apparatus, or optical members arranged in front of the imaging surface.
2. Description of the Related Art
If dust becomes attached to optical elements arranged close to an imaging surface of an image sensor in an image pickup device, such as a digital camera, there is a potential problem that image quality will be impaired by shadows of the dust being seen in prints. As a first method of solving this problem, there is a structure making the image sensor unit as air-tight as possible. As a second method, with a single lens reflex camera with interchangeable lenses, for example, there is known a method of exposing the image sensor to the outside using a special operating mode with the lens removed from the camera body, and blowing off dust that has become attached to the image sensor surface using a blower or the like.
Also, as a another method for solving the problem, Japanese patent laid-open No. 2005-159711 (laid-open Jun. 16, 2005) discloses, in a camera having a so called compensation mechanism for camera-shake that performs compensation for camera shake by shifting an image sensor along a surface orthogonal to the photography optical axis in response to output of a sensor for detecting camera-shake, technology for removing dust that has become attached to the imaging surface by vibrating the image sensor using the image sensor shift mechanism.